The ports of Durban and Richards Bay have reported normalised levels of operations over the past two days, with all employees having reported for their shifts and Transnet working towards clearing the backlog caused by the unrest in the region in the past week, it said in a statement on July 20.
The reinstatement of the supply chain on the key national roads, the N2 and N3, has increased activities at the port terminals, as trucks continue to call at the ports.
In Richards Bay, the multipurpose and dry-bulk terminals handled seven vessels over the weekend. Pier 2 in the Port of Durban serviced four vessels, while Pier 1 continues to work on the two-berthed vessels.
Transnet said it had been engaging all impacted customers throughout this time to ensure services could resume as quickly as possible and, where required, to deal with bottlenecks caused by the protest.
The rail corridor network between Gauteng and Durban, which had been negatively impacted on by the unrest, had been reopened, with train services running since Friday.
Transnet Freight Rail has since managed to run 42 trains since the reopening of the line and will continue to run more trains as efforts to stabilise this key network intensify.
Transnet Pipelines’ network remains operational. Additional patrols have been deployed across the entire network, resulting in the arrest of four people for tampering with the pipeline on July 19. Transnet has confirmed that this was not linked to the unrest.